A MAN who saw five members of his family jailed for heroin trafficking has been found dead in Bodmin.

Jason Wood died at an address in St Nicholas Street in the early hours of Thursday.

Police say they are not treating his death as suspicious and are awaiting the results of a post-mortem examination.

A police spokeswoman said: " An ambulance and police attended an address in St Nicholas Street at 3am on July 25 after a report that a 39-year-old man had collapsed. He was treated at the scene but was pronounced dead. The body was taken to the Royal Cornwall Hospital and the coroner has been informed.

"His next of kin have been contacted and informed of his death."

Last December Mr Wood, a heroin addict, was spared a jail sentence despite a string of previous convictions after a judge at Truro Crown Court decided to give him one last chance.

He had admitted possessing drugs with intent to supply after police found 146.85g of amphetamine in an ice cream tub and a further 4.67 grams of the drug in a box of suet which was in his freezer at an address in Bodmin.

He was given a 12-month community order for the offences.

Mr Wood's father, mother, two brothers and a nephew are currently serving jail sentences imposed in April after they were convicted of being part of a gang that brought an estimated £1 million of heroin into Devon and Cornwall.

Michael Wood, aged 75, was jailed for six and a half years; his wife Teresa, aged 63, and grandson Jake, aged 24, were both jailed for four years. All three lived at Furze Hill, Bodmin.

Ivan Wood, aged 43, was jailed for nine years and his brother, Calvin, aged 41, for six. They both lived at Monument Way, Bodmin.

The sentences passed on them and other gang members totalled more than 70 years.

Last Friday the fugitive leader of the gang, Stephen Blundell, was warned he would be jailed in his absence unless he gave himself up.

Blundell, 34, went on the run days before the rest of his gang were jailed and is now thought to be abroad.

A judge has given him seven weeks to return and give himself up or face being sentenced on the basis that he was the mastermind behind the plot.

Blundell, from Leather Lane, Liverpool, used a network of couriers to bring up to 10kg of heroin into the South West. He had one supply route into Tiverton, another into Torbay and a third into Bodmin, involving the Wood family.

Blundell fled the country just before that hearing in April and Judge Francis Gilbert QC has now set a date in mid-September for his sentencing.

He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply heroin at an earlier hearing but did so on the basis that his role was to organise the transport of the drugs to the South West rather than being the overall head of the operation.